Óscar Mascareñas – www.ioscar.ie
Clare, Ireland, Summer 2022
Attention
Briefly
if I stop and pay attention there is always poetry around me.
In sound, in image, in light, in movement.
Not words
‘words no longer words’
but poetry.
Yes, a word on its own is also full of the poetic:
poetry pulsates inside a word. But it doesn’t end there.
It doesn’t dwell there.
If I stop, briefly, and pay attention, there is always poetry inside:
my eyes create it as I observe
my ears compose it when I listen
my hands, my feet, the whole of my body
skin in and out
feel it as I let my self go.
And watch.
Attentively.
Poetry and the poem
Many think a poem is what poetry is.
Poetry might come out of a poem.
Be in the poem.
Float above it.
And then vanish.
The poem is not the poetry.
Artistic dialogue
Usually silence.
Collaboration
Everyone arrives openended.
Empty as a barrenscape.
Then, it rains.
Creating with dance
To create sound for dance, with dance, I remind myself that all sound is movement first.
After that
all I need to do
is move.
Dance
All movement is held up by stillness.
Improvisation
Just keep paying attention. It never is too long to wait.
Wait again – whenever possible. It always is.
The sound, the movement, the image is only a step away.
But if you move too fast, you miss it.
As the flower blossoms, the scent, the colour, the texture, the edges and the centre are all one.
What we see, smell and touch in and of the flower
is our own senses re-cognising themselves.
The scent is no longer the flower’s
The colour is hers no more
The texture, the edges, the centre:
It’s all me.
Discovery
Only possible if I forget.
Silence
The most silent thing you can experience
is your heartbeat.
Choreography
The sun rises and sets.
The moon follows.
The crow quietly observes as it bounces on a thin telephone line.
The river flows.
People come and go.
The lovers kiss.
The travelling cloud rains.
Flowers bloom. And die.
In the Spring, the blackbird’s song in flight.
The stone always there. Being stone.
The wind shapes the worldscape.
Improvisation, again
Such is the complexity of emptiness
such its simplicity
that when it is the ground for improvisation
there can be no error.
Learning to unlearn
I am.
